Kill It With Homeopathy!

[ladysprite]

I love urban fantasy. It's my genre of choice, and I've been a fan of it since well before it was trendy. It has its flaws, all genres do, but for the most part I can handwave past them to appreciate the story and the world and the characters.

There's one plot hole, though, that I'm running into more and more often, that I just can't get past. It's one of the only things nearly guaranteed to get me to shout, shake my fist in the air, and put the book in Time Out for being bad. And given that more and more of my friends are taking up writing in general and urban fantasy in particular, I need to put out a plea to them, and to all authors, to please never ever ever use this idea.

Killing vampires with bullets made of anticoagulant is Just. Plain. Stupid.

The logic starts with 'well, vampires have blood in them.' Yep. You know what else has blood in them? People. Also chickens, and iguanas, and cattle, and bunny rabbits, and werewolves, and anything else in the vertebrate category. We don't shoot them with anticoagulants.

I've seen settings where the logic chain follows to '...and blood has COAGULANT! And coagulant plus anticoagulant - it's like matter and antimatter! They'll explode on contact! Boom, vampire bits everywhere!'

If this were true, my job would be a lot more interesting, given that I need to store blood in tubes with anticoagulant every time I test a dog for heartworm. All anticoagulant does is keep blood from clotting.

Other authors just stick with the basic logic, figuring that should be enough. Vampires are full of blood; if you shoot them with anticoagulant all that blood will leak out, right?

There's just one problem with that. They *drink* blood. So the worst you could do would be shoot them in the stomach and have their lunch leak out, leaving them hungry. Even if you shot them in the femoral artery, they're dead. Their hearts don't pump, and the blood in their veins doesn't circulate. They can't bleed to death, even if the blood doesn't clot. Everything above the wound may pour out, but everything below will just sit there - and again, why would bleeding damage a dead thing?

This just leaves the explanation of sympathetic magic. Vampires are all about blood, and coagulant is all about... um.... blood. And I'd even accept that, if the authors presented it that way. But it's always couched in terms of science, where it boils down to complete and utter malarky. It's about as logical and scientific as saying, 'Oh no, an attack cow! Cows are full of milk! Quick, shoot it with lactaid! Lactaid breaks down milk proteins!'

'Oh no, a zombie! Zombies eat brains! Shoot it with prozac!'

'Oh, no - attack vegetarians! Shoot them with Beano!'

Please, authors. Just use wood-tipped bullets and call it magic. You're writing fantasy, it's okay to do that. That's why it's called fantasy.

Comments

[aries-walker.livejournal.com]

Was it the movie Blade that had the bullets made of compressed daylight, or somesuch? While not perhaps up to the ridiculous level of anticoagulant, you have to admit that's pretty dumb.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Related to the title of the post, here's an article you might find amusing:

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2010/04/20/new-age-terrorists-develop-homeopathic-bomb/

[braider.livejournal.com]

Quick, shoot it with lactaid!

You are wonderful.

[pixel.livejournal.com]

"wood-tipped bullets"

That could actually be kinda cool.

Even better would be a wood-tipped tracer round. That way you could shoot a flaming bullet that both stakes them *and* burns them with phosphorous. That should take care of even the most stubborn vampires.

[blaisepascal]

I've preferred the bullets loaded with Holy Water myself. But really, a wooden bullet isn't going to hurt a vamp unless it's a CNS or Cardiac hit, both of which are hard, protected, small, targets.

I would have assumed that vampire saliva contains anticoagulants for much the same reason mosquito and tick salivas do.

(in my mental urban fantasy picture, the vampires make mixed drinks, like 1 shot gin, 1 shot Type O, 10mg heparin, served over ice in a tall glass with club soda).

[auntiemame67.livejournal.com]

Sadly, wood tipped bullets would only work if they were from an extremely powerful tree, such as rowan, oak or ash. The whole thing about staking a vampire is that you use the *natural* wood to pin the *unnatural* vampire to the *natural* earth. A powerful magical tree, blessed by whatever religion you choose, might work if you set your magic up right. Actually, bullets coated with wild rose hips would be really great!

Oh, wait, sorry, this is not a chance for me to whip out my amazingly geeky, far too complete for anyone, including me, knowledge of vampire lore. Sorry. It's just so damned seldom I get a chance to show it off!

Anyway, back to your post -- shooting vampires with anticoagulent might, at *best*, give you a semi squishy, sloshy vampire, and really, who wants that?

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

I've always been a fan of the "Concentrated UV beam gun vs. vampires" urban fantasy approach. While it is a tiny bit of a stretch, the logical extrapolation is at least THERE to stretch from.

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

My favorite is having a Catholic priest make up some anointing oil...using DMSO. Relies entirely on chemical action, no circulation needed.

Shotgun shells filled with toothpicks work as well.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Quick, shoot it with lactaid!
Ok, that made me giggle... :-)

[metaphysick.livejournal.com]

I hate it when authors deliberately spill science all over potentially perfectly good vampire stories.

"Because it's maaaaaaaagic," is a 100% reasonable explanation for things that happen in a work of fantasy and/or horror fiction. Vampires don't have a fatal allergy to ultraviolet radiation; rather, the monstrous vitality in their unnatural corpse-bodies is destroyed by the holy power of the sun. A tanning bed should do exactly nothing to a vampire. Likewise, a silver bullet doesn't kill a werewolf because of some chemical reaction. It kills said werewolf because it's magic.

But, then, I'm also in the "Hannibal Lecter as protagonist" camp, in terms of my preference when it comes to monstrous characters in stories, and I'd love to see a work of vampire fiction written from that perspective... which, of course, probably means that I'll have to write it, myself.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Dare I ask what series you've encountered this idiocy in? Just so that I know not to be tempted to pick them up?

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

In Alan Moore's "Top Ten: the Forty-Niners", Joan of Arc blessed the city reservoir and they firehosed a swarm of vamps to destruction...

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

If you could create a weapon to tattoo a cross onto a vampire, that would be an excellent modification.

Although, I do get annoyed by this "only catholic stuff kills vampires." What if the Vampire isn't particularly Catholic? I would take serious delight in a Jewish vampire getting beaten by a loaf of challah.

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

Shooting a knowledgeable attack vegetarian (I can't believe I just typed that phrase) with Beano might slow them down. "Ew! Fish!" Even in the liquid form, where I have trouble believing it's necessary. Sorry, pet peeve, and slowing one down is not the same as putting it out of commission.

[pujaemuss.livejournal.com]

'Oh no, an attack cow! Cows are full of milk! Quick, shoot it with lactaid! Lactaid breaks down milk proteins!'

This is a mark of genius.

PJW

[etherial.livejournal.com]

May I ask an unrelated fantasy verterinary question?

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Vampires have some sort of liquid blood, otherwise you couldn't drain them to turn.

If you shot a vampire full of coagulant, they might starve, or start crunching...

There is at least one case on record of someone who was on an antidepressant trial, overdosed, was close to death, then they discovered he was in the placebo side of the trial - at which point he recovered.

[raging-apathy.livejournal.com]

I would think all an anticoagulant would give a vampire is diarrhea.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that in one of the Anita Blake books, Edward comes up with hollow-point bullets filled with liquid silver nitrate. But I could be remembering wrong.

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

So one of the cheeziest vampire hunters I ever read about drank gin and tonics before going after Drac, because when he was really scared, he tossed his cookies, & he made the G&Ts with holy water.

It got worse from there.